What Else Can Go Wrong?

When life keeps knocking you down. sometimes it's better to stay down for a little while until the mortar fire dies down. Even then, Fate finds a way to kick you in the teeth.

You remember a couple of weeks ago, two strays landed on our property. I put out flyers, contacted vets and every shelter I could find, but no one claimed the poor dogs, and the shelters wouldn't take them. We had decided early on we would keep them if no one wanted them.

R.I.P. Biscuit

The puppy (who we now called Biscuit) came down with Parvo a few days ago. Unlike Murray, Biscuit didn't have the stamina. Even though he had turned the corner and started drinking water on his own, the damage was too great on his little body. It makes me angry because we caught it early and started treatment immediately. But survival depends entirely on the dog's immune system.

We kept vigil over Biscuit as storms ripped through Texas. At the height of the rage, I noticed the pitch of the wind had changed. Greg stepped outside and saw a funnel cloud form. That's when the lights went out. 

We gathered the other dogs and put them in the only interior room we had without windows, then went back to Biscuit. We waited with him. He was too close to death to be moved.

If you've ever watched someone die slowly, it's a peculiar event. The heart races, struggling to keep the body alive, but the breaths grow shallower. In the end, the dying will give several short, deep gasps, a last ditch effort to keep breathing, and then...nothing. The heart continues to beat for a few seconds more, and then it too stops.

The winds grew harder, and the rain and hail came down like bullets. The storm crushed us in a fist, but we stayed put. As it reached its howling pinnacle, Biscuit breathed his last. Like some great Karmic irony, the brunt of the tornado and Biscuit's life ended at the same moment.

We grieved as if he had been with us all our lives. We had grown to love him that much.

Notice the gas price sign on the right. Yet there's no gas station in the area.

Only the edge of the tornado clipped us. Within an hour, the rain had stopped. With no power, and my cell nearly dead, we had to go out so I could recharge it on the car charger. We followed the devastation to the next town.

I don't have to tell you what a twister can do. Fortunately, most of our homes are set far from one another, so there wasn't as much damage as the folks further south of us suffered in Lancaster and Forney. 

At least I saw why we had no power. There was a metal shed twisted around the top of one of the power poles. You could see the path of the tornado as it flattened buildings in one great swath.

Here's a link with video of the tornadoes in action. Texas Tornadoes: Amazing Images of Storm

***

We have power again, but we don't have Biscuit. We still have who we think was probably his mother. She's an old lady and we'll be taking her to the vet today to get her vaccinations and heartworm test. 

She's been hard to name. I call her MaMa or Old Lady and she responds to those names more than anything else we've tried. The old girl has a home with us for as long as she lives. I wish we could have done as much for her baby. 

We're still hurting, a well of grief and anger. I am so tired of all this bad luck. There's a limit even for me.

Thank you for all your emails and phone calls over the past few days. We're still here, picking up the pieces.